Friday, September 10, 2010

Just who was Anna Katherine Green?

By Leslie Shortlidge

Pennsylvania politics took a back seat to mystery one day in 1878. Who, asked the state’s legislators, was the real author of the taut, gritty mystery novel The Leavenworth Case? Surely “Anna Katharine Green” was a pen name for someone of the male persuasion. since the story of murder and subsequent detection was considered “manifestly beyond a woman’s powers.”*

The elected officials of PA were wrong. Anna Katharine Green was indeed Anna Katharine Green. Born in Brooklyn in 1846, her father, first reader, and first editor, James Wilson Green, was a lawyer. One has to assume that young Anna was paying quite a bit of attention to the stories her father brought home from work, or been sufficiently interested in criminal law to conduct her own investigation into police procedure and criminal trials. The Leavenworth Case, which was a huge success, immediately assumes a form that 21st century readers know and love: a body, a post-mortem, a locked room, a potential murder weapon, the testimony of witnesses, family secrets. Green puts all of these now-familiar tropes into play very quickly, commanding the reader’s attention and exciting curiosity.

She also introduces the reader to perhaps the most important trope, and that is the canny but eccentric sleuth in the personage of Mr. Gryce, who confounds our expectations from the get-go, as the novel’s narrator explains:

“And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly, comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not even rest on you. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book, or button.”

The dialogue is sharp – no excessive tag lines clutter up the rapid back-and-forth of these post-bellum Brooklynites. Human nature is on display in the personages of the household staff and the jurors at the inquest. Love shows up right away, unbidden and unhelpful. Secrets are choked back by those unwilling to reveal them. Glances are exchanged.

Green wrote at least 40 other books, and also created detectives Violet Strange (isn’t that the best name ever?) and Amelia Butterworth, characters who perhaps influenced Nancy Drew and Miss Marple.

Judge for yourself the importance of Green’s work: The first ten people to comment on this blog will be entered to win the just-issued Penguin edition of The Leavenworth Case.
===================Leslie Shortlidge is a Guppie and lives in Columbus, Ohio. You can follow her on Twitter, where her handle is Bookorama. Most of her posts are exciting updates on her word count, using the #amwriting hash tag.

I've never heard of Anna Katherine Green, but I'm going to look for her books. I've been reading my way through the books P.D. James mentions in "Talking about Detective Fiction," but I think she missed Green

This is great! I was aware of Anna Green but didn't truly appreciate her contribution to the mystery novel. I now want to read 'The Leavenworth Case." Thanks for bringing her back to my attention.Diane Finney